


vision

by hartxfriar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, My First Fanfic, but I've never used ao3, even if i read a lot of fics on here, i wonder, what am I doing with my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:08:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8419123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hartxfriar/pseuds/hartxfriar
Summary: She waits, feeling the countdown between her lungs, five four three two one, and she’s looking up, into grey eyes.“Yes,” she hisses. “Because you are a monster who doesn’t care about anything, who is a natural born liar and probably doesn’t have a heart, yes, I hate myself for being drawn to you, because you, you destroy me.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first fic on ao3, i love tomione so this is???i actually have no idea what this is

**Vision.**

**.**

**Tom Riddle** _ and  _ **Hermione Granger.**

**.**

They come for them in the middle of the night when Harry whispers _ his  _ name, and desperately, she hits him with a stinging spell, watches his face swell and murmurs a silent apology as they pull them away with nails and claws and wands pointed at their throats, Ron’s voice throaty and raw and he screams, “Let her  _ go,  _ you fucking-”

Greyback only snarls, and steps closer to her, and Hermione is frozen, she can’t move, maybe because of the dozen wands pressed to her back and the lack of her own, or the fact that she can feel the acridness of his breath against the edge of her cheek. 

“Such  _ pretty  _ skin,” he says, extending his nails to the softness of her cheek until they draw a single line of blood. “Soft...delicious…”

For a second, the world blurs and she spins and whispers softly _no no no_ because _god,_ her heart fucking _aches,_ she can feel it pounding and pressing and shattering against her ribcage and she _needs to,_ she _needs–_

Reality kicks in and then she’s breathing in the cold night air, oxygen sharp and cold and freezing in her lungs, and Ron is screaming  _ Cecily, Cecily, Cecily  _ like a war cry, and she regains her senses and kicks Scabior in the groin, watching him stagger back, ignoring the sharp pain that erupts across her back, the blood that is soaking her robes from the Slashing Curse.  

“How  _ fucking  _ dare you,” Greyback hisses. “Dirty little  _ whore,  _ don’t you know I eat little girls like you for breakfast?  _ Yes,  _ darling, you would taste like lemon and mint and sweet, salty blood, wouldn’t you, princess?”

She hisses and spits at the ground and her face is blank as Scabior presses a wand deeper into her back and she feels like her back is igniting, cremating, burning.

“Ah, yes, Vernon Dudley,” Greyback says, shifting to face Harry, at swollen eyes. “Your name isn’t on the list.”

“She takes a step back, and Ron stares at her for a second, his eyes wide. “

Wait,” someone, a snatcher breathes. “That looks awfully like...like  _ Harry Potter _ .”

Scabior’s eyes glint and realisation hits as he pulls out a dirty piece of paper. “Look at this! On the Prophet!”

“ _ Cecily Essen, _ ” Greyback reads, “ _ the mudblood known to be traveling with Harry Potter.  _ The picture looks exactly like you, darling.”

Hermione inhales sharply and it registers that she’s standing in another dimension, where her name is  _ Cecily Essen  _ and her parents aren’t dentists and  _ god, _ then she stands still, so  _ fucking  _ still and she can’t move, she can hardly breathe, because she knows what’s coming next and  _ yet. _

“Harry Potter,” Greyback says, and he presses one finger to Harry’s scar, laughs as he flinches back.

“Where do we take ‘em?” Scabior asks. “You could call the Dark Lord, Greyback.””

“No,” Greyback says, the edges of his lips curling up. “First we take them to Malfoy Manor.”

**[.]**

She has gone through this once before and she thinks once is enough.

Hermione still screams when Bellatrix’s  _ Crucio  _ hits her square in the chest, her insides still curl and she feels like she is slowly losing her mind. 

The scars still linger on her arm, white and clear,  _ mudblood  _ in messed-up block letters, and Bellatrix smiles when she sees it, raises her knife and carves along the lines again, blood oozing from her knife.

And then, suddenly another  _ Crucio,  _ pain, excruciating pain, and the world is still, black. 

**[.]**

Hermione opens her eyes just as Bellatrix presses her finger to her Dark Mark to summon  _ him,  _ and Hermione swallows and she  _ remembers,  _ books and spearmint and bite marks and dark, dark blood and teeth as sharp as daggers that cut and stab and make her chest bruise flash and she kneels down and runs her palm around the smooth marble in the manor until her skin breaks and blood bubbles to the surface.

He arrives, and her world just  _ fucking  _ stops, because he’s  _ Tom,  _ all dark hair and eyes like thunderstorms and hurricanes and his jaw is still a pristine, perfectly arched hairpin curve and he’s  _ hers.  _ There’s blood on his lips, she realizes, even if he is blurred and barely visible, a flash of color and sound, and he flicks his tongue and licks it off in one, swift motion, eyes shifting, teeth clenched.

And he is angry,  _ seething.  _ “I was so fucking close,” he snarls, and the Death Eaters cower. “Are you sure it’s  _ him?  _ Have you bought Harry Potter at last? _ ” _

“Yes, my lord. He was caught travelling with the blood traitor and the mudblood,” Bellatrix says, gesturing to Hermione. 

He walks over to her, where she is lying on the floor, numb. “Hello, mudblood friend of Harry Potter,” he says, and he’s not looking at  _ her,  _ he’s looking at the hazy lights outside glass windows and she gives a slight groan and he turns back, eyes spinning, spinning, spinning until he sees her scar, the red  _ mudblood  _ that is carved so deep she can feel her bone exposed and  _ god,  _ it’s been years and centuries and millenniums, yet only seconds, only half an instant has passed and her mind is dizzy with nerve damage and pain and  _ memories,  _ so many fucking memories. 

She can’t stop what happens next, as she opens her eyes and blinks at her surroundings, faces coming into focus, her eyes meeting his.

Hermione is delirious from pain, and as she brushes a curl away from her forehead, she whispers, “ _ Tom _ ?”

**[.]**

“Redemption,” Albus Dumbledore says. 

Hermione stares at the portrait of the former headmaster, his blue eyes twinkling. 

“Redemption,” she repeats. 

It is the end of the war, and they had won. It’s just a shame that she was the only one alive, the only one left.

“The spell is dangerous, Hermione,” Dumbledore says behind the frame. “It could kill you. And even if you didn’t, you would slip between the cracks of time.”

“I know,” she exhales, and holds her wand in the middle of her palm. Somehow, the words  _ Tom Riddle  _ and  _ redemption  _ still sound foreign together. “But it has to be me. There’s no one left. Everyone is dead.”

“Good luck,” Dumbledore says.

Hermione raises her wand, points it to her chest, tasting bitter and bile, whispers the incantation like a prayer. 

_ Finite preterite. Finite preterite. Finite preterite. _

And she is back, back in the time of Tom Marvolo Riddle, armed with books and knowledge of the future. 

**[.]**

Hermione tries to hide behind the Gryffindor table, behind books and pages and the familiarity of Hogwarts and the Great Hall when she arrives back at the start of Riddle’s seventh year, and she knows she should be trying to change him, try to redeem him, but she can’t bear to look him in the eye, at the person who killed everyone she ever loved.

Hermione spends most of her time at the library, which is familiar and smells of pages and words, where she can lose herself in research, forget her mission. 

She just wants to  _ forget,  _ forget blood and salt and brine and scorched flesh at the back at her mouth, at her best friend lying dead, eyes still open in the middle of the Great Hall and her screaming and clawing and pushing to the front, roaring until she can’t hear her own voice  _ nonnonnononono. Not you.  _

I have to do this, Hermione thinks, as the nightmares set in again and she shifts her eyes.  _ I have to do this. _

**[.]**

She crashes into Tom Riddle on the way to Advanced Potions and bumping  headfirst into him, books flying and scattering and drifting to the floor, and he bends to pick up a ink stained note sheet, initials curved and sharp and small _H.G._ at the top at the page, and looks up.

She is breathing heavily and she’s inhaling and looking up, up, up, at dark eyes and eyes that are grey and dark and  _ distant,  _ and she can see his adam’s apple bob near the crisp white of his throat and she inhales, feels toxic run through her veins.

“I’m Tom Riddle,” he says, extending his hand, handing her the notes, the books, the picture of Ron and Harry and her on the summer before fourth year, and she is hit by a wave of nostalgia and pain and lost innocence. “I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

“Hermione Granger,” she swallows, and she feels him reach for her mind, but she puts up her walls, as tall and hard as cement. “I’m new; I transferred here this semester.”

He arches an eyebrow. “From where?”

“My uncle, Gregory, is a specialist on magical creatures,” she says, nails digging into her palm. “I traveled with him for the majority of life, ever since...my parents died.”

His eyes soften, turn lighter and she shifts uncomfortably because she thinks of her parents, at them in Australia and  _ happy,  _ without her, and she shakes her head.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Granger,” he whispers, inches closer until she absorbs the scent of old cologne and dark skies and fresh ink, and she thinks of the past, of dark libraries and dusty books and Ron looming over her with a grin and a smear over one cheek. 

She looks up, into his eyes and searches, looks for remorse, for  _ redemption,  _ for anything but hostility, and all she finds is a gleam right above his irises that reflect sunlight.

“Well,” she says, and her eyes flash in the hallway lights. “Don’t be. I don’t need your pity, Tom Riddle.”

She feels him dig deeper,  _ deeper still,  _ and she pulls her defence as easy as she breathes.

“Okay then,” he says, the edges of his lips lifting into a grin. “Shall I walk you to class? There’s sideways and moving staircases at every turn, it would be impossible for a new student– _ you  _  to navigate on their own.”

Her stomach clenches and unclenches and she’s shaking her head. “There’s no need.”

“I insist.”

“If you insist.” she whispers, tentative.

**[.]**

He meets her in the library, where she is reading a book, her legs crossed, brows furrowed.

She looks up, and her eyes widen and he sees  _ something,  _ contempt, weakness across her face and her quill drops, an ink stain marking the floor beneath where she is sitting. 

“Riddle,” she inhales sharply. “What are you doing here?”

“The same thing as you’re doing,” Tom says, sliding into the seat from across from hers. “There isn’t a school rule against studying in the library, is there now, Miss Granger?”

“Don’t call me that.  _ Please _ .”

Her stomach clenches and burns and there’s acid pooling at the edge of her mouth, melting at her bottom lip.

“Hermione then,” he sighs. “Is  _ Hermione  _ okay?”

“What the fuck do you want, Riddle?” she says, and it scares her, how he’s being a little too  _ nice.  _ “I’m guessing you didn’t make it all the way here to do some light reading,  _ dear, brilliant, genius Tom Riddle. _ ”

She blinks, and he realises her eyes are brown and auburn and gold up close,  _ too  _ close. 

Before she can stop it, he’s flipping through the books piled on the table and she extends a hand and grabs at a page but all she meets is his the solid of his arm and she flinches back.

“Don’t you  _ dare,  _ Riddle.”

“ _ Dark Magic in the Eighteenth Century, _ ” he recites. “ _ Theory of Time Travel, Dark Incantations and Spells. _ ”

“Just–”

“I’m not _ fucking  _ stupid, Hermione,” he trails, licking salt off one finger. “You’re lying about everything, aren’t you? You think that no one would notice, because you’re the person who slips into the background, but you could be more discreet.

“You’re hiding something. A girl who arrives for her seventh year having no previous magical education, no previous experience, but yet–”

Her heart is beating painfully against her chest and adrenaline is coursing through the map of blue and red veins crisscrossed above the curve of her neck and  _ god, _ she needs  _ air,  _ she needs to stop the sinking feeling in her lungs that comes with  _ him. _

“What do you  _ want,  _ Riddle?”

“Who are you?” 

“Why are you so interested?”

“There’s something about you,” he says, licks his lips and stares at her with narrowed eyes, hair falling slightly over his forehead. “Something about you that I can’t place. You intrigue me,  _ Hermione Granger. _ ”

She wants to get up but she is stuck and her seat, paralyzed.

“Please don’t waste my time, Riddle,” she spits, and then she picks up her books of research and leaves.

And she walks away, skirt bobbing, hair swaying, and she doesn’t stop to think until she reaches her bed, until she can finally breathe.

**[.]**

Slughorn pairs them up for potions and Hermione can barely look at him, only to tell him to pass the crushed snake fangs and to  _ stop. _

“Stop what?” he questions. “Stop me from unraveling a fraud?”

Hermione brushes a stray curl out of her face and stirs fourteen times clockwise because she has counted, because she’s trying not to think of the pristine  _ fucking  _ green of his tie against crisp white shirt, the way his eyes shift and land on her and how she feels  _ chaotic  _ is rushing through her blood, pulsing and beating and hissing.

“Just  _ stop _ ,” she spits. “I don’t have anything to hide, Riddle. And if you keep this up, I  _ will–” _

He adds a palmful of root of mandrake to the simmering cauldron, and the edges of his mouth twitch slightly as she shifts, the ends of her scarlet robes swishing.

“You will what, darling?”

Her blood is boiling, simmering, rushing towards her face and her hair is pasted to her forehead in auburn colored curls, and  _ fuck him,  _ fuck him and the teeth that peek out from beneath his lips, white and glittering and  _ sharp. _

Slughorn says something in the background, but she hears nothing, it is nothing but static at the back of her head.

“I will tear out your throat, Tom Riddle, I will burn through layer and layer and layer of flesh and bone until your heart ignites and you  _ beg  _ for me to let you die,” Hermione hisses, raising her fingers and waiting, waiting until magic reaches her hands, sharp and crackling, and a line of blood wells along his throat where she ran them across in the air.

“You underestimate me.”

“No, Hermione Granger,” he smiles again, eyes gleaming under the dim lamplight of the potions classroom. He’s raising his fingers in careful precision and running lines along the air and she feels pain erupt in the spot below her collarbone. “You underestimate  _ me. _ ”

_ TMR,  _ is carved on her collar in shallow red letters, straight and neat and dripping down her skin and seeping into her shirt, blood dark and salty and  _ thick. _

“Tom Marvolo Riddle,” she says. “Of course. Of course, you  _ brilliant, darling  _ Tom would know how to do wandless magic.”

“You know my middle name,” Tom Riddle whispers, his breath hot and burning against her freezing skin and  _ god, fuck, she’s losing control _ and she knows it is not a question, but a statement. 

“I will kill you,” Hermione whispers, tapping her wand and watching the potion fly into two vials(marked) and land of Slughorn’s desk and she knows that somewhere a timer is sounding, but she doesn’t care.

“I don’t think you will, Hermione,” he says, eyes still. “No, you’re the girl who  _ hesitates,  _ who doesn’t kill, no, you probably killed someone once and threw up and the thought of it. You’re the doe eyed girl who disarms and doesn’t aim to kill, aren’t you?”

“I’m  _ not–” _

“Girls like you aren’t born to be ruthless.” he drawls and she just  _ stops,  _ for one fucking second in time, listens to the light pound of blood against her ear.

Slughorn signals that the time limit for the potions is over Hermione breathes through her throat, breathes in burned potion and cauldron smoke and toxic.

“Let me walk to you Transfiguration,” Tom says, folding a piece of paper and hands it to her. “I made a small map of the school for you. Easy, really, staircases, vanishing rooms, the usual.”

Her mind is screaming  _ nononononono,  _ screaming and shouting and shattering and she shouldn’t have to think, but she hesitates, because there’s this  _ feeling  _ that begins at her ribcage when he’s near her, that rushes through her veins and pulses and pounds and splits blood and toxic and sharp teeth.

_ Pick your poison. _

“You know my schedule,” she says, a statement, not a question.

He grins.

**[.]**

His hands rest on the small of her back after four weeks of walking her to classes and late nights at libraries, blood and questions and magic, always magic, circling her skin and she shivers.

Only a little bit.

**[.]**

Hermione’s sitting at the library and Tom is sitting across from her, books and pages and spilled ink between them, and he’s stroking the back of her head, cutting through strands of gold and brown and auburn, and  _ god  _ she can’t concentrate because of them.

“You’re  _ distracting  _ me, Riddle,” she says, and her eyes are glistening. “ I hate when you do that.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” he whispers, eyes drowsy with lack of sleep, of nights out in the forest, duels and sweat and  _ light.  _ “You have to lie like you believe yourself, it  _ is  _ the truth to you, and you don’t twist the lie around the circumstances, you twist the circumstances around the lie, darling.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Her head spins, and she remembers fourteen days ago, when in one moment of weakness, she let her defense down and Tom pointed his wand at her and the world blurred and spinned and her memories flashed and she couldn’t take it  _ not again not again not again,  _ and falling forward, forward, forward, her lip split open, whispering  _ you’re from the future, aren’t you? It all makes sense now. How the world burned and trembled at my feet. _

And how she was delirious from exhaustion and blood loss and the way Harry’s eyes looked when they were on the first train, the splatter of golden freckles across Ginny’s nose and how Luna had screamed and screamed when Harry had fell to the ground with a sickening  _ crack. _

_ But you lost,  _ she said,  _ all of the world, at your feet. And it means nothing.  _

_ But I lost,  _ he repeated,like a mantra again and again and again.  _ But I lost. _

“And you, Tom Riddle,” Hermione says. “Must be a brilliant liar. Cunning, ambitious,  _ manipulative.  _ Ruthless. It doesn’t matter to you, does it? Not even when people bleed and die and burn because of you. Because you don’t fucking  _ care. _ ”

He says nothing, only runs his finger along the edge of his collar bone, under white, faded letters.  _ TMR. _

“You killed your own father,” she whispers. “You killed a girl without even  _ thinking,  _ didn’t you, Tom Riddle?”

“Yes, because my father was a fucking  _ muggle  _ who abandoned my mother and left me for dead,” he purrs. “And  _ that  _ was an accident.”

Hermione runs her fingertips along the sharp edge of a page, and doesn’t wince when blood blooms across her skin, she’s breathing in pages and books and  _ him,  _ and god is it intoxicating.

“What is it you want, Tom Riddle?”

“The world,” he whispers, and his fingers are running along the inside of her thighs, and she’s sure the world is spinning, blurring, and  _ she’s,  _ she’s gasping for breath, throat sharp and stinging and her lungs burning in the waves across her chest and her pupils are brown and black and dilated under the library lights. “Power. And you, always you.”

**[.]**

It’s Ron’s birthday. 

She tries not to think about it when she wakes up in the morning, she  _ can’t  _ think about it or she’ll go insane, she can’t think about the last time he looked at her at the Great Hall, of how his face was covered with blood and dirt and remains and how he had howled when he looked down at the body of his best friend, she tries not to think about twelve year old him with a quidditch book in his hand and yellow frosting smeared across his nose, she tries not to think about the fact that everyone she loves is dead.

She’s studying in the library without Tom, because she can’t see him, not  _ today,  _ and she tries to keep track of time, though she fails miserably when she takes a look at the dusty clock across from her and jumps.

Hermione gathers her books and steps out into the hallway, praying that she doesn’t meet Tom again, prays it is someone else patrolling the halls,  _ anyone _ else.

She tiptoes through the hallway, and for a minute, she gives a sigh of relief because no one is there, but then there is a shadow standing in front of her, dark hair and clad in the Head Boy uniform, and her books fall out of her arms with a colossal  _ crash.  _

“ _ Shit, _ ” she curses under her breath as Tom Riddle spins around suddenly, amused.

“Hello, Granger.”

She freezes. “Hello, Riddle.”

He hands her the books, which she takes hesitantly, and she lowers her head and tries to leave, but he has blocked the entrance and only looks up at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Going somewhere, darling?” he says, and the edges of his mouth curl up.

“I’m not in the mood, RIddle,” she says,, supporting her books with one hand and trying to not meet his eyes. “Leave me  _ alone. _ ”

“Some sentimental anniversary for your dead friends,” he asks. “Is it, Hermione?”

Her heart is pounding and twisting and rattling in her chest and she feels something in her flare when she hears the words,  _ dead friends,  _ as if she’s a little girl playing tea party with the dead.

“Fuck  _ you, _ ” she says harshly.

“Fuck  _ me _ ?” he asks, stepping closer and closing the gap between them both. “Is that what you’d like to do, Granger?”

His breath, warm and somewhat comforting, tickles her ear as he whispers, and she shakes her head once, a shaky  _ no.  _

He is messing with her head, he is invading her senses, and as she pushes away a curl that is stuck to her cheek with sweat or tears; she can’t tell, she can’t stop the inevitable.

And, faces of the past come up and surface in her brain, and she shakes her head again, emotion and anger and regret rising up her throat. And  _ fuck  _ Dumbledore and redemption and time, she can’t move, she can barely breathe.

“You don’t deserve it,” she whispers, her hand on his stomach, her eyes caramel coloured slits, and she knows she is losing her control, and Hermione imagines Dumbledore furrowing his eyebrows at her, saying that everyone has goodness in them and that he deserves a second chance, but  _ fuck  _ it, because when she looks in his eyes, she only sees the eyes of a murderer. 

“You don’t fucking deserve it,” she hisses, and her voice rises with the inhale and exhale of her chest, “not after all you’ve done.”

“No,” Tom says, inching closer so their shoulders are almost touching, “I don’t. Yes, I’m a murderer and a liar and I manipulative  _ bastard  _ who’s hands are drenched in fucking blood. And I don’t  _ fucking  _ care.”

He takes a step forward, tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and she’s shaking her head. 

And then, suddenly, his hands are on the side of her cheek, and he’s kissing her, gently and softly and all at once, his hands in her hair, and she all she does is stand still. His deft fingers brush her scar, and he whispers  _ delicious  _ as he shifts his attention to her neck, peppering kisses along the line of her jaw. 

She lets out a whimper, and something in her breaks, twists and falls, and before she realises what she’s doing, Hermione’s kissing him back, melting into the masculine muskiness of him and brushing his face with her fingers.

_ Mine,  _ he says, and her throat retracts, but she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t pull away, because it’s too late now, and the world blurs in comparison of  _ him. _

“No,” she whispers, staggering back as she pulls away abruptly. “ _ No.” _

He hands her the books which she has dropped, and she doesn’t meet his eyes, not even when he whispers  _ Hermione,  darling  _ over and over again, and she doesn’t run, no, she lowers her head and walks in stiff steps back to the Gryffindor common room.

**[.]**

The common room is empty, and she almost falls apart by the time she reaches her dorm because of everything flashing before her and she  _ can’t– _

She can’t  _ breathe. _

She misses them so much that her insides sting and burn and ache, and she  _ needs,  _ she  _ needs  _ to go back.

She grabs her wand from the inside of her pillow and another robe for the cold and rushes out the door, the Fat Lady giving her a curious look as she climbs out the portrait hole and runs through hallways and staircases and slick marble floors until she is breathless and her lungs are scorching in her lungs and she reaches an empty patch at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

And then Hermione is raising her wand, feeling magic spark in her veins and drown the world out, feeling time disappear, and it doesn’t matter if the wind whips and whips and blows at her chest and if the ground beneath her is shifting because she can go  _ back,  _ she can go back to Harry and Ron and her parents and forget the memory of Tom Riddle’s face, she can go back to Crookshanks and his crooked tail and watch the sun go down and the stars shift.

“ _ Hermione!” _

She screams the spells, louder, louder, louder, and rain begins to pour from the sky and drench her in water, but she doesn’t  _ care,  _ the world is fading behind her, it is moving and blurring, and for the first time in months, she  _ smiles. _

_ “GRANGER!” _

And then it all just  _ stops.  _

 "What the bloody hell were you thinking?” Tom Riddle appears, wet and pale and wide eyed. “You could’ve killed yourself, Granger, did you think of that?”

" _YOU,”_ she screams, she’s rushing forward and sinking her fist into his chest and waiting for him to flinch. “YOU STOPPED ME.  _ LET ME GO,  _ I HAVE TO GO BACK! I HAVE TO GO BACK,  _ PLEASE _ , LET ME GO BACK.”

There’s blood in her mouth as she speaks, her nose must’ve started bleeding and she tastes iron and metal at the back of her mouth and all she thinks is  _ please  _ before the world tilts and it all goes black. 

**[.]**

When Hermione wakes up, she’s in an unfamiliar bed, covers pulled up to her chin and her head is  _ pounding  _ as she inhales and smells peppermint and the sharp tang of–

“Hello, darling,” Tom Riddle says.

“How long was I out for?”

“Two days, give or take,” he says. “I took you here. You must either be reckless, brave or just fucking  _ stupid  _ to do that. You  _ know  _ that the spell doesn’t take the traveller back until the spell feels the time is right, didn’t you?”

“I just  _ needed  _ to see my friends,” she hisses. “I know the conditions of the spell.”

He shakes his head, and  she tries not to think how  _ good  _ he looks there, eyebrows furrowed and hair ruffled.

“Here,” he hands her a dark looking potion. “Drink this.”

Hermione looks at him hesitantly, and drowns it in one swallow, the liquid burning going down her throat and scorching her lungs, but the headaches recede, and she lets out a shaky exhale.

“You almost  _ died,  _ Hermione,” Tom says, and he leans closer, closer, until the air is thick with his scent and she feels her insides clench. 

“I almost did,” she runs a finger across the edge of his cheek, along the white line she had carved into the side of his throat. “Why did you save me, Tom?”

“The world can burn, it can fall at my feet,” he whispers. “But I can’t lose you. Not  _ you. _ ”

She leans in and latches her mouth onto his and he has his hands on her back, fingernails digging lower,  _ lower,  _ until they’re pressing against her clit and she gasps for air, mouth crashing onto his, his scent sweet and musky at the back of her throat, magic and mint and  _ Tom,  _ and god is it intoxicating, his tongue is drawing circles, lapping around hers and she is drowning, drowning, drowning, and she almost doesn’t notice when he brushes her scar, mudblood in white letters and flinches back. 

He stares at it for a second and a smile spreads across his face, dark and twisted.

“Who did this to you?”

“It doesn’t  _ matter, _ ” she says between closed teeth. “Because I am one. Because I’m disgusting, I’m filth, I’m the scum under a pureblood’s perfect fucking leather shoes. Because I’m everything you stand against.”

“I repeat: who did this to you, Granger.”

“I’m a  _ mudblood,  _ Tom.”

“I don’t fucking  _ care, _ ” he hisses, baring teeth. “You’re  _ different. _ And you must be  _ blind  _ to think that blood purity matters to me. No, nothing matters but power, complete power. Now, who did this to you?”

“ _ Different, _ ” she gives a laugh. “Listen to yourself, RIddle. And one of your followers did this, without magic too, just a blunt knife and patience.”

She leaves.

**[.]**

“I think you would find it curious,” Abraxas Malfoy says to him the next morning. “That your precious Granger is a mudblood.”

Tom spins around in four seconds and raises his finger, watches as Malfoy squirms and quakes and tries to scream,  _ fucking pathetic, really,  _ he thinks.

“Call her that again,” he says calmly. “And I will rip your throat out, heal it again and continue the process until your voice is gone and you beg for me to let you die.”

“Understood?”

“Understood,” Malfoy says, dropping to his knees in pain. “Understood.”

**[.]**

“You’re avoiding me.”

“I’m  _ not  _ avoiding you, Tom,” she says calmly, he’s sitting across from her in the library, in their usual spot, and he is close, so  _ fucking  _ close. “I just need some  _ space. _ ”

“Then why are you here, darling?” he asks, barely a whisper, his fingers are touching her thighs and she’s shivering and shuddering and trying to concentrate. “You’re drawn to me, Granger, and you  _ hate  _ yourself for it, you go to your room and run and hide and  _ fuck  _ yourself and pretend it was me.”

She waits, feeling the countdown between her lungs,  _ five four three two one,  _ and she’s looking up, into grey eyes.

“ _ Yes, _ ” she hisses. “Because you are a  _ monster  _ who doesn’t care about anything, who is a natural born liar and probably doesn’t have a  _ heart,  _ yes, I hate myself for being drawn to you, because you, you destroy me.”

She’s looking at him, wide eyed, and Hermione’s sure she leans in first and then suddenly she’s crashing into him and his jacket is off and discarded on the floor as she sinks her fingers into his cheek and  _ deeper, deeper,  _ she licking at the side of his mouth and his waist is against his, all blood and tears and sweat and she curses when he runs his teeth along her neck and she shivers and arches her back, and he’s whispering a line of words from her forehead to her toes  _ mine mine mine mine,  _ and she rakes her nails across his back, blood booming across skin, and his eyes are dark, dilated, he’s ripping off her blouse, buttons flying and as she circles his waist with her thighs, licks salt off his jaw, all she can think is: _ burn me in ash, drown me in salt.  _

She lets out a moan, low and soft and echoing in the space between them and the edges of his mouth quirk, as he presses his nails deeper, deeper onto her clit, and as he runs his hands along her chest, along her lungs, watching as her air is cut off and she bares her teeth and sinks them into his neck, and her insides are pounding and pulsing and quivering and something inside her clenches and unclenches and unravels, hums as he leans down and encircles her waist with his.

_ you destroy me,  _ she thinks, and she is reckless and covered in blood and sweat.  _ Don’t ever stop. _

**[.]**

_ Mine, mine, mine,  _ he says.

_ No,  _ Hermione says, and she shifts, and she’s on top of him, tasting blood at the roof of her tongue.  _ Mine. _

**[.]**

They’re out at the edge of the forest and looking up at the sky, at constellations and stars and dark, dark skies.

“Andromeda,” he says, pointing to the bright and glittering lines drawn into the sky and she sighs. “And Draco, right  _ there. _ ”

“I love you,” she says suddenly. “And I know it’s  _ wrong  _ and– but it’s something to love something, something you cannot explain.”

“Of loving someone being able to build you up and destroy you in one word,” he whispers. “Of someone who hurts and kills only capable of caring about  _ you. _ ”

She hums and leans her head on his shoulder, looks up at the sky again.

“And  _ you,” _ he says. “You kill me and burn me and ignite me and you rebuild me, and  _ yet,  _ and  _ yet–” _

Hermione falls asleep in his arms and wakes up suddenly in another dimension.

Harry is there, and Ron is there, and Hermione is holding a book, and she is panic-stricken because he isn’t there and she has come back to a place that is eerily familiar in her nightmares, and Dumbledore was wrong, things aren’t fixed, they’re exactly the same except for the fact that her name is Cecliy Essen and her parents are lawyers and hidden away in Asia, and it doesn’t make a  _ difference, does it? _

There isn’t redemption, not for  _ him.  _ She couldn’t twist his path to light, and as she looks into Harry’s brilliant green eyes, she knows she has failed.

She hears Harry whisper  _ his  _ name,  _ Voldemort,  _ softly and quietly, and she knows what is going to happen so she hits him with a Stinging Hex, watches his face swell.

_ Memories. _

She can barely breathe when they take them to Malfoy Manor, and her heart stops as the sudden flow of memories come back all at once as they drag her out and she holds her breath.

After all, she has gone through this once before, and she thinks once is enough.

**[.]**

When she wakes up, she’s in a bed that smells like mint and cinnamon and  _ him. _

“Tom,” she whispers. “Is that you?”

“I’ve looked for you,” he says. “For fifty fucking years, for half a century. I’ve looked for you everywhere, and I couldn’t fucking find you.”

The memories flash before her, of blood and salt and nails, of burnt robes and magic crackling in her veins, of  _ TMR  _ in letters beneath her collarbone, of screaming and rain and  _ you destroy me. _

“It’s nothing now,” she whispers and he leans closer, closer still. “Now that I’m here.”

_ Now that I’m here. _

And then he’s whispering  _ Hermione, Hermione  _ and they collide, his lips are pressing against hers and she’s reeling under fluorescent lights, and  _ god,  _ he tastes like stars and galaxies and beautiful lies and she  _ remembers,  _ remembers  _ you’re a terrible liar,  _ and he’s caressing her cheek with his thumb, hips a continuous pressure against her waist, and her veins split open with ecstasy and glitter and blood, she’s extending her tongue and sending frantic licks along his bottom lip while he sighs into hers and he’s running fingers across her body, across scars and dips and curves and he whispers  _ mine mine mine,  _ like a prayer, and she arches her back and lets out a scream of satisfaction, she thinks,  _ pick your poison,  _ as he runs through her blood, venom and toxic.

**[.]**

“ _ In inceptum finis est,”  _ he says.

The beginning is the end.

**fin.**

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
